


Thy Gracious, Golden, Glittering Gleams

by 221b_hound



Series: Star-crossed [6]
Category: Richard III - Shakespeare, Sherlock (TV), Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, Dreamsharing, Frottage, M/M, Reincarnation, Shakespearean style language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:49:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2540045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock and John are beginning to notice that they sometimes seem to have the same dreams. Sex dreams mostly, these days. Sherlock's not willing to admit to that, but since they have proper inspiration, he and John have sex on the sofa. ANd later, while they sleep, they share another dream, full of words of love about the sun, the moon, the seas and the green growing things of the earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thy Gracious, Golden, Glittering Gleams

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from a speech in the Pyramus and Thisby play in act 5 of A Midsummer Night's Dream:
> 
> Pyramus:  
> Sweet Moon, I thank thee for thy sunny beams;  
> I thank thee, Moon, for shining now so bright;  
> For, by thy gracious, golden, glittering gleams,  
> I trust to take of truest Thisby sight.

John made an effort not to walk too fast. He was more used to having to stride along at a brisk, military pace just to keep up with Sherlock. Now the plaster cast was off, but Sherlock was still using a cane, and it slowed him down.

Sherlock banged the cane against a post box as he passed it in the street, venting his irritation.

“It is beyond me how you stood it,” he snarled.

John glanced at Sherlock glaring at the cane. “I didn’t,” he said, “I was a cranky bastard and I cursed the thing daily. Doubly so since I knew I didn’t really need it – I just couldn’t convince my leg of the fact.’

Sherlock stabbed the cane into the pavement. It wasn’t John’s cane – that would have been too short for him. Sherlock had had this one made especially, to his height requirement and whatever specifications of elegance and weight he preferred.

“You actually need yours,” said John in response to Sherlock’s surliness, “And you made excellent use of it today.”

Sherlock jabbed at the ground less viciously, then smiled and continued limping home. “Yes. I did.”

The clever thief hadn’t been quite clever enough, but a nasty piece of work when cornered. He’d mistaken Sherlock, with his injury, for an easy target. Sherlock had used the cane – both hook end and body – to disarm, trip and pin the little bastard in a flat four moves. Just as well, because John had been gearing up to help the prick stab himself in the thigh with that knife.

“Anyone would think you’d practised those moves,” said John, knowing perfectly well it was a prompt.

Sherlock, knowing it too, grinned at him. “I am a proficient singlestick fighter.”

“Of course you are, even if that’s just a fancy way of saying you know how to whack people with your walking stick.” He pursed his lips. “Could I learn?”

Sherlock cast him an assessing glance. “No doubt, though it’s most effective when you have reach. You are, in any case, more of a _bruiser_.” He grinned at John's cocked eyebrow. “That is by no means a criticism. When you need reach, you have the gun, where your proficiencies outstrip mine considerably. Up close, you are a very effective hand to hand fighter. Stick fighting would not be your forte. Nor fencing, I would think, though some of the heavier swords from the past would have suited you.”

John let himself be mollified by that swashbuckling modifier. “You fence, don’t you?”

“Of course. Mycroft and I trained together.”

“Hence that sword in his umbrella he thinks I don’t know about?”

“Hence,” agreed Sherlock with a smile.

John paused on the pavement, thinking, though it was partly an excuse to let Sherlock catch up again. “I used to throw knives,” he confessed.

Sherlock raised an eyebrow. He hadn’t expected that.

John shrugged, but he was pleased to have surprised Sherlock. “Out in Helmand, I got bored sometimes. A mate used to do knife tricks and he taught me that one. The hardest part is finding a well-balanced knife.” At Sherlock’s keen look, which seemed to be part intellectual interest, part arousal, John added, “I'll see if I can still do it; and if I can I'll teach you.”

Sherlock nodded and strode ahead, his cane tap-tap-tapping on the footpath. “And stop slowing down for me,” he said, less gruffly than he might have, “It’s annoying.”

John watched him go for a moment, then followed on. He liked the view from behind Sherlock, for several reasons. Well, Sherlock’s arse – when it wasn’t cloaked by the Belstaff – was reason enough. But just lately… apart from the cane, from behind it looked as though Sherlock had never fallen from that appalling rooftop. From here, John couldn’t see the patch of hair that was still so short, beside his temple. Sherlock had taken to carefully arranging curls over the denuded spot. John would have laughed at the vanity, except that he still found it almost physically painful to see such evidence of how he’d nearly lost Sherlock – and that he suspected Sherlock did it, not for vanity, but to spare them both the distress it still caused John.

When they got home, Sherlock flopped onto the sofa, put the cane to one side and pushed both hands through his hair. John barely supressed a flinch at the sight of Sherlock’s skull, the scar underneath the short-spiked patch of hair.

Sherlock ruffled his longer hair back into place and regarded John with a serious frown.

“You still dream about it,” he said, “And… Khan.”

John grimaced at the change of subject, though perhaps it was more an…extension of subject. “I told you, it’s you. Different hair, different name, but you.” 

“Yes, yes. But you do.”

“Not the nightmare,” John said, “I have…” His grimace grew more pronounced, but he knew from experience that Sherlock wouldn’t drop it, and just last night John had woken up moaning that name, to find Sherlock horny beyond belief, at least as aroused as John, which ended pretty damned well, so fine, _oh hell_ , he went for the full confession. “…sex dreams.” 

“With Khan,” said Sherlock flatly. 

“With _you_ ,” insisted John, “A you with another name, but most definitely you. Down to the moles on your back. Don't be jealous of a damned dream when it's still _you_.” 

“I’m not jealous. Don't be absurd.” 

“And anyway,” continued John, “It's me but not me, too. I have a different name even if I can never remember what it was when I wake up.” 

Sherlock paused for the longest time and then, reluctantly, he said “...Richard.” 

John blinked. “....What?” 

Sherlock scowled but persisted. “I have… sex dreams, in which you are not you, but _Richard_ , and I am not me but… someone else.” He waved a hand impatiently. “We are obviously responding to some identical stimuli. Shared dreams are clearly not impossible, or at least, dreaming on the same subject matter is not. Since you had your nightmares with this Khan who looks like me, I've had dreams in which I have the hair you describe and you are named Richard. Your arm is...” he stared at John’s right arm.

John flexed the fingers of his right hand. “Crippled,” he said softly, “Yes.” 

They stared at each other.

“They are _similar_ dreams, John, but not the _same_ dream. Not a _shared_ dream.” 

John thought Sherlock was protesting too much, but it made him uncomfortable too. He didn’t want to pursue it. “Of course not.” 

Sherlock reached for his cane, flipped it to hold by the foot, and used the hook to capture John through the belt. With a wicked grin, he tugged lightly. John took one step but no more, although he grinned back. Sherlock pulled on the cane again, slowly this time, carefully reeling John in, until John stood between his knees.

“They are… rather good dreams,” said Sherlock.

John cupped Sherlock’s face in his hands, and brushed his thumbs over those high cheekbones. The tips of his fingers brushed against the patch of short hair, and John bent to kiss the spot. Then he shifted to press his lips to Sherlock’s, to open his mouth, and encourage Sherlock’s open too, with a hum and the tip of his tongue. Sherlock’s hands on his waist encouraged John to sit, his legs straddling Sherlock’s thigh, and the kiss deepened – controlled by John’s hands and fingers on Sherlock’s face, John’s mouth pressing hard-soft-hard against Sherlock’s, until Sherlock moaned softly.

Sherlock tried to say something against john’s lips, then brought his hands up to hold John steady in turn, to kiss him hard, making small, growling sounds, and then pushed him away, just that fraction, so that he could say: “Strip.”

John sat back on Sherlock’s thigh, grinned with wicked delight, then got to his feet. Sherlock was watching him, eyes dilated and luminous with desire, breathing heavily, his cock grown noticeably hard and pushing uncomfortably against his trousers.

Unhurried, John turned to close and lock both doors to the flat. Then he stood in front of Sherlock and simply looked at him for a moment. Sherlock gazed at John’s eyes, his mouth, slowly down his still clothed body and, as his gaze reached John’s feet, John shucked off his shoes. He bent to put them tidily aside then tugged off his socks and tucked them into the shoes.

Then he stood straight again and waited until Sherlock’s eyes were fixed on his once more.

With steady hands, John undid the buttons of his shirt. He released the buttons of his cuffs. He pulled the shirt from his belt and let it fall open over his jeans. He didn’t remove his shirt.

Instead, he unbuckled his belt, left it loose, and then released the button of his jeans. Underneath, the blue cotton of a pair of briefs could be seen. Above that, his stomach, softer than it used to be, but still with that layer of muscle; a line of dark blond hair disappeared into the waistband of his pants.

Sherlock stared at John’s navel, licked his lips, and dropped his gaze. Breathed heavily and looked up again into John’s eyes. John looked back, only at Sherlock’s face, watching Sherlock looking at him with such thorough attention.

John pulled down his zipper – not slowly, but in no especial hurry, either.

It wasn’t a coquettish striptease. It was a man undressing with cool, calm confidence.

And then, before another scrap of clothing was moved, John stepped forward to kneel between Sherlock’s thighs, which had fallen open as Sherlock watched John undress. John looked steadily in Sherlock’s eyes as he reached out, unfastened the button and zip of Sherlock’s trousers, and hooked his fingers over the waistband. He tugged. Sherlock lifted his hips and John pulled both trousers and pants down, but only part way down Sherlock’s thighs.

Then John stood up again to survey the picture – Sherlock in his purple shirt and his suit jacket framing his hips; his trousers bunched tight above his knees, and bare, bare, bare in between. Angular hips and strong, pale thighs and his flushed cock jutting up from the thatch of tight, dark curls. Sherlock’s eyes were bright, his cheeks tinged red, and his lips were parted as he took in sharp, tremulous breaths. Having watched John’s hands pull his clothes down, he resumed his intense regard of John’s face.

Satisfied, John pulled his shirt off and draped it over his shoes. He seemed a slight fellow, sometimes, under the jackets and the jumpers and the high-buttoned shirts, but his clothes hid a compact musculature. The scar wasn’t so bad – a puckered dent of an entry wound from the front, a shadow in the rise of his sturdy pectoral muscle. His shoulders were broader than his hips; his upper arms strong, tapering down to sensitive hands.

John pushed his jeans and pants down, bending to step out of them, twisting slightly with the motion. It gave Sherlock a glimpse of John’s back and the curve of his rump. The larger scar of the exit wound on John’s shoulder bore the marks of surgery too, but Sherlock had never found the mark ugly. Intriguing, sometimes, for the story it told. But John’s whole body told a story. His strong, straight spine. Those strong legs, too, thighs and calves, beautifully proportioned. His feet, even, Sherlock thought, were perfect: anchored to the earth in a way that Sherlock never had been. Not tied to it, but firm upon it.

John tilted his head, still looking at Sherlock examine him. He shifted slightly, aware that Sherlock was following the rise of John’s arse, and then around his thighs to John’s cock, thickening but not yet erect.

Sherlock opened his mouth a little, like a cat tasting the atmosphere, and John found that incredibly arousing – that Sherlock was tasting their joint arousal in the air, Sherlock’s already slicked slit, the heat rising off John’s body, the subtle musk of desire.

At last John dropped his own gaze, briefly, to appreciate Sherlock’s own heat, his hard-harder-hardening cock so exposed, seeming more lascivious by being framed by clothed skin than if Sherlock were completely naked.

John licked his lips, met Sherlock’s gaze again, and his eyes crinkled in a smile as he stepped close and straddled Sherlock’s thighs; slid sensuously, legs spread, into Sherlock’s lap. He manoeuvred carefully, until Sherlock’s cock rested against the dip in John’s backside, his own prick pushed against Sherlock’s stomach.

He took Sherlock’s face in his hands again, tilted it up and ghosted his lips over Sherlock’s as he moved his hips, adjusting the angle, guided by the nudge of Sherlock’s cock up against his perineum. He pushed down minutely, settling Sherlock’s cock into place, then a little further to feel it push against his perineum and then up, over his entrance, then further up. Another shift, and Sherlock’s cock dragged back over the sensitive skin until the head of it, slick and hot, retracing the path to press against the delicate skin under John’s balls.

Sherlock moaned. John pressed his mouth to the sound and licked it out with his tongue on Sherlock’s. He kissed, and Sherlock kissed back, not quite helpless under the firm hold of hands and mouth, and John moved his hips again. Sherlock’s cock was pressed hot between the cheeks of John’s backside, and John used his knees and thighs to guide and control the motion, in complete command. He rose and pushed down. He curled his pelvis, tightened his gluteal muscles _just so._ Sherlock whimpered into John’s mouth. Groaned. Growled. Pushed his hips to meet John’s.

“Stop,” John commanded, lips moving a fraction from Sherlock’s, and Sherlock stopped. John resumed the movement of his hips and muscles. The skin of his inner thighs, the muscles of them, pushed against Sherlock’s outer thighs, and Sherlock was as aware of that as he was of his cock sliding against the frotting heat of John’s arse; John’s balls brushing his lap; of John’s cock pressing on his belly, John’s hungry, controlling mouth on his, John’s hands in his hair, and one hand now dipping to pinch and roll Sherlock’s right nipple

Sherlock was still half dressed, but he was the one helpless with desire, submitting to John as John kissed and fondled and commanded with his naked body. The thought that he should assert control crossed Sherlock’s mind, and almost immediately left it. There were times enough when the dominance went the other way, in bed and out. And he loved John in this mood (in any mood; loving John was a basic state of his universe, like the speed of light or, more relevant to Sherlock, the rate of gravitational force).

Sherlock, then, placed his hands on John’s hips; rubbed them over John’s ribs and thighs and backside, squeezing the muscle there sometimes, and John let him do that, adjusting each roll and thrust of his hips, until Sherlock could only cling tight, his hands scooped around the back of John’s thighs; could only moan and pant, whether John kissed his uptilted mouth or sucked and nipped blissful bruising kisses into Sherlock’s neck, or pinched and tweaked Sherlock’s nipples.

The moans began to break and John moved faster, faster, periodically tightening his gluteals on the downward push so that Sherlock did not slip out of the curves of hot, embracing flesh.

The moan voiced as a rising cry, and John thrust his hips perfectly over Sherlock’s cock as his mouth descended over Sherlock’s again, his hands holding Sherlock’s cheeks and chin, and he kissed and licked the cry right out of Sherlock’s mouth into his own.

With a few more, gentler thrusts, John eased Sherlock back from his orgasm. Then, his own breath panting, his skin sheened in perspiration, hands still cupping Sherlock’s face, John slid back a little from his position. Sherlock forced his drooping eyelids open and watched John smile. Watched John’s hand dip down between them to collect Sherlock’s ejaculate and smear it over his own full and straining cock. Watched John slip his tightly curled hand up and down his own shaft.

“John,” Sherlock murmured.

“Watch me,” John breathed back, and they both looked down to watch John stroke himself, thighs clamped around Sherlock’s still, hand moving faster and faster, thumb swiping over the swollen head of John’s cock, making him groan and pant.

“You…” panted John, “All over me. God. Sherlock.” The back of John’s hand brushed against Sherlock’s stomach, again and again, and Sherlock gripped John’s hips hard, pulling him forward and closer, so that the tip of John’s cock moved in the smear of pre-come he’d leaked onto Sherlock’s skin. John’s hand stroked slowly again, making sure the crown of him rubbed against Sherlock’s pale belly. Then faster, both hand and contact with the pale skin, and then the perfect speed, the perfect slide of hand on cock; crown on belly; and then Sherlock was holding John steady across his hips and lower back as John’s back arched, his hips thrust hard, and John came with an inarticulate cry.

Finally, panting and grinning, John slumped forward again, resting his forehead against’ Sherlock’s. Sherlock wrapped his arms around John and pulled him close in his lap so that they were chest to chest. Sherlock nuzzled up to suck a red blotch against John’s throat, and John stretched his neck to let him.

After a little while of nipping kisses and sticky cuddling, John said: “Shower.” So they showered.

Sherlock tossed his stained clothes into the washbasket and donned his pyjamas, although it was only late afternoon. He dropped cheerfully into the kitchen chair to resume an experiment abandoned that morning before the case and John slumped languidly, and with a smug grin, into his armchair to read a medical journal.

John, Sherlock noted, was asleep ten minutes later. Sherlock himself was filled with pleasant lassitude, and his eyes kept slipping shut (and he remembered the sensations of John naked in his bare lap; the scent of him, of them, together, the sound of John’s hard breathing, and his own, and their cries as they came. His mind palace really had no use for such detailed memories, but he kept them anyway, as though storing them to fill a place that had been empty for too long. For centuries.)

Sherlock worked for several hours. Or rather, he had intended to. But the painkillers he stopped to take for his aching leg made him drowsy, and it was more pleasant to close his eyes and drift away…

*

Richard sat with his back against the large, warm rock beside the river, his legs stretched out. Between them, Khan lay with his head against Richard’s chest, his hands on Richard’s thighs. His fingers flexed against the muscles while, eyes closed, he listened to Richard’s heart beat out a rhythm for words Khan knew, but not from whence they came.

_silently if,out of not knowable_   
_night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess_   
_(only which is this world)more my life does_   
_not leap than with the mystery your smile_

Even the odd punctuation and missing spaces seemed part of the memory. Khan presumed it came from one of the lives he’d lived since shedding his first skin.

Behind him, Richard stroked Khan’s hair and dropped a kiss onto Khan’s brow.

“Something troubles you,” said Khan, for he knew every line of that beloved face, and every shift that signalled troubled thought.

“Tis but a memory, and one long past,” said Richard, “I heed it not.”

“You heed it a little,” Khan contradicted, and Richard grimaced at the truth of it.

“One day at my brother’s house, before leaving for our tryst in the glade," he confessed, "My other brother Clarence noted how oft I forsook their company to spend the days, as they thought, alone. Edward, thinking himself of higher wit than he ought, who had no more wit than a flea, or less, some would say, declared it a priceless mirth that I might be meeting a lover.”

Khan stroked Richard’s leg soothingly, at the old bitterness in that tone.

“His friends, come to swill wine and gorge themselves on bread and meat more fit for the meanest peasant than for that witless crew of parasites, declared that any such lover was surely blind, or lack-witted, and certainly ill-formed herself, or else the answer to the riddle lie in a pecuniary willingness, and that right handsomely. My brothers laughed harder than all the rest, and even those little nephews capered and chortled as though they understood the barb.”

Richard pursed his lips, his beard bristling with remembered scorn and humiliation. “Such fawning, fat-kidneyed hedge-pigs as they would ne’er envisage that such peerless beauty awaited my return on that sixth day of our idyll – a form of divinity unmatched by any man or woman ever seen by my two eyes, nor yet by any eyes on earth. None had imagination enough to conjure my angel made human, still less to imagine that he would give himself so willing to me.”

“You say you have not a flattering tongue, yet you find beautiful words for me.” Khan shifted in Richard’s embrace so that he could rub his cheek against Richard’s chest, and then bite at the cloth of his shirt.

“I do not flatter thee, Khan, but speak only what is true,” Richard chided him, stroking Khan’s forehead with his fingers.

“Your foolish brother and his pack of hounds are long dust, and mean nothing now,” Khan said, moving further still so that he could kneel between Richard’s knees and look him in the face.

“Such knaves meant little then, in truth,” said Richard, “I am a plain speaking man, and expected little but vacuous noise from their rattling throats that would otherwise treacle out praise upon my praise-bloated kin. It is only that I held you now in my arms, and remembered their little bleatings, and how I had wished, so fleetingly, to waste on their dull ears a poem to sketch out but a fraction of your perfection. But I remembered in time that I am no use at poetic words, and left them.”

“Tell me then, love, in your unadorned and unpoetic words, how you love me.” 

Khan smiled his challenge, knowing full well the vanity that spurred it: or rather, the vanity of loving to hear his unpoetic Richard deny his nature and speak glories, so that Khan might have the opportunity to give that glory back in luscious measure, so to see the loving delight on Richard’s face to hear such praises offered back to him at last.

Richard tilted his head, considered his love with stern countenance and said: “I love thee as the ocean and the rivers love the moon. Drawn ever to you when you are near, and when thou recede, draw back to mine own self momentarily, only to chase thee to where thou liest beyond the horizon – and so drawn ever on to thee.” 

“The moon seems an inconstant kind of love,” Khan teased, “Always running off.”

“Not at all,” Richard admonished him, “The moon is unfairly chastised as inconstant, when it is his light only that waxes and wanes. The moon is not always seen but is ever present, beckoning the water wherever he travels across the sky. It is not his fault the seas must always follow to where he sits among the stars. But the seas, for their faithfulness, will have their reward, for the moon’s bright face darkens but returns again, and all the tides of the grandest waters of the world rely on his coming and going. All life thereunder grows and swells and lives and dies under the pearl of the night, and the oceans ebb and flow like the heartbeat of the world, and all for the beautiful, constant moon. I live by your heartbeat, beloved, and your light on the waters of my ebbing self ripples and is taken into my bosom. The sea and the moon are constant, I say.” 

“And you are quite right,” said Khan, almost breathless with the vision thus painted. 

“I know,” said Richard smugly, and he cocked his head. “How, then, do you love me, my silver-limned and constant moon?” he teased, ever willing to listen to his Khan speak of anything at all.

Khan’s smile was dimpling sweet – an expression that none but Richard had ever seen on that austere visage. “I love you, Richard, like the trees love the sun, which grow toward it and take all his bright light and turn it into nourishment so that they may grow closer yet to the chariot of the sky.”

Richard considered this, pleased for a moment, but then he frowned.

“Yet the flow of the world’s waters will never reach the moon,” he said, “And no ocean laps on the moon’s own shores. The sun does but embrace the trees by proxy, and all growing things will perish upon its blazing skin. Is our love so truly unattainable? Will moon and sea ne’er embrace? Nor yet the fields and sun?”

At this unhappy thought, Richard grew impatient and a mite fretful.

Khan caught up Richard’s left hand in his. “Ah, love, that is not the way to look on it. You must see – the moon is only bright because it reflects the sun’s own brilliance.”

Richard grimaced. “I am no good at these love games. My words are too prosaic and yet lack logic.”

Khan kissed his fingers. “Logic is not the stuff of love songs, Richard, but if you insist upon it – our two analogies are apt and fit better than you believe. For the sea is the source of the water that the sun draws up to rain down on the thirsting fields, which need both sun and rain to flourish. You see – in all your incarnations, whether the sea that follows the moon, or the sun that grants that moon light and so draws rain to fall upon the earth, you give me life.”

Richard laughed then, amused and touched that he, after all, did not fail at pretty words to speak his heart. He cupped Khan’s face with his good hand and stroked the smooth, pale skin with his callused thumb. “And in all your incarnations, as glorious moon or the thirsting fields that bloom and give sweetness, artistry and aye, the bread of life, you draw me on and give me purpose.”

“And between us two,” said Khan, wrapping his arms around Richard’s body and drawing him close, “We are sun and moon and earth, with all the earth's seas and lands and the green, growing things – we are a solar system entire unto ourselves.”

They kissed, soft-sweet, then with little biting kisses that scraped a little but did not bruise, then kissed soft again.

“How strange that your waking Sherlock self is so ignorant of the stars,” murmured Richard.

Khan nudged against Richard’s nose with his own and kissed his bearded cheek, first one, then the other, and then his lips again. “The stars brought me only sorrow,” he said softly, “My waking self prefers the solid earth to the firmament wherein I built ruin and madness for myself – and was lonely until reunited with my sun, the one sole star I need to shine upon me, and could once more etch my star’s soul’s name deep in my own soul.”

Richard, restored to good and amorous humour, curled his fingers around the nape of Khan’s neck and played with the tendrils of his hair. “And I, lost without my fields to water, without my moon to guide the restless seas of my heart, lacked purpose till I found thee, and thou gave them back to me. Yet now I can never be lonely, for my moon draws me on, even when I cannot see him, though it take ten times a hundred years for his orbit to bring him back to bless my sight.”

“ _You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars_ ,” Khan murmured to Richard, still not knowing from whence the words came – some other poet, from some other place, but it didn’t matter, for he and Richard were kissing again, drawing on each other, nourishing each other, sun and moon and sea and field, a perfect, enclosed system.

*

John woke up to find Sherlock standing in front of the armchair, head tilted to one side, looking at him with bemusement. Sherlock's hair was a lopsided mess and there were creases on his face from where he’d dropped asleep against his forearms.

“Sherlock?” he said muzzily.

Sherlock blinked. “ _Yours is the light by which my spirit's born_ ,” he said. His eyes softened as he said it, though he still seemed bemused.

John’s eyes sparkled affectionately in return. “ _Yours is the darkness of my soul’s return. You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars_ ,” he responded. Then he looked puzzled. “Where is that from? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.”

“EE Cummings. I learned it for a school recital, at my mother‘s insistence. I’ve tried deleting it several times but it won’t stay deleted.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“Sentimental hogwash,” Sherlock corrected him, then his whole expression gentled. “It has moved from Mummy’s room in the mind palace to yours.”

This confession made tenderness bloom in a smile that suffused John’s expression. “I don’t mind.”

“This does not explain how you know the piece...”

“Osmosis?” suggested John with a grin.

“No doubt there’s a neurological phenomenon to explain it.”

“No doubt.” John noted the darkness outside the windows, and he rose, holding out a hand to Sherlock. “We’ll google it in the morning.”

Sherlock frowned, then sighed and took John’s hand. “The internet is full of crackpots.”

“So it is,” John agreed, then yawned. They fell into step beside each other, Sherlock limping slightly still, and went to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem quoted by Khan, Sherlock and John is by EE Cummings, and the presentation here, with all its odd missing spaces, is exactly as Cummings wrote it.
> 
> silently if,out of not knowable  
> night's utmost nothing,wanders a little guess  
> (only which is this world)more my life does  
> not leap than with the mystery your smile  
> ...  
> sings or if(spiralling as luminous  
> they climb oblivion)voices who are dreams,  
> less into heaven certainly earth swims  
> than each my deeper death becomes your kiss  
> ...  
> losing through you what seemed myself,i find  
> selves unimaginably mine;beyond  
> sorrow's own joys and hoping's very fears  
> ...  
> yours is the light by which my spirit's born:  
> yours is the darkness of my soul's return  
> -you are my sun,my moon,and all my stars  
> ...  
> ~ e.e.cummings

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Thy Gracious, Golden, Glittering Gleams](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4507806) by [aranel_parmadil](https://archiveofourown.org/users/aranel_parmadil/pseuds/aranel_parmadil)




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